Digital video programming, such as broadcast television, often includes one or more advertisements or other non-program segments inserted between program segments. For instance, scheduled network programming may include preselected advertisements that are broadcast at specified time slots and thereby interspersed between segments of the programming. When this type of network programming is recorded, the recorded content includes the program segments in addition to the original advertisements as originally broadcast with the program segments. In some cases, the recorded content may also include marker frames at the beginning and end of the advertisements. Thus, the original advertisements will be presented during subsequent playback of such recorded content unless replaced.
Advertisement (Ad) replacement systems are used in broadcast systems to replace advertisements existing in previously recorded digital video with replacement advertisements. Such ad replacement systems are configured to detect segments such as advertisements in a video signal and to replace the detected segments with replacement advertisements, such as updated, targeted, or different advertisements. Accordingly, the result is modified programming including presentation of the original program segments with replacement advertisements interspersed therein.
Modified programming or content resulting from such ad replacement systems may exhibit imperfections. For instance, although complete replacement of an original advertisement may be desired, in some cases the original advertisement may only be partially replaced. As one example, the start of the replacement advertisement may be unintentionally offset or delayed from the actual start of the original advertisement. In this example, the replacement advertisement may not entirely overlap the original advertisement such that residual video frames from the original advertisement remain in the programming either before the start of the replacement advertisement or after the end of the replacement advertisement. The presence of such residual frames and/or residual audio or text corresponding to the residual frames is undesirable.